Tank Tracks to Rangoon (24 page)

On 28th November the enemy were turned out of their Windy Corner position by a combination of frontal attack and flank march. On 2nd December Kalewa was entered, ‘empty except for a moribund Jap found in a pagoda’. Lt Harpartap Singh’s tank flew the Union Jack which 11th Division had carried into Addis Ababa earlier in the war, and on reaching the Chindwin a Bombay Grenadier climbed the highest pagoda and tied the flag to the top.

To the Japanese on the other bank, the gesture signalled the total failure of
U-Go.
They were exactly back where they had started, and they had sustained the worst defeat in Japanese history. They had lost 53,000 men
*
and almost all their equipment, and they had lost face. They had abandoned their wounded, killing many to avoid capture
†
and the survivors had recrossed the river a starving and disorganized rabble, preyed upon by their own rear area troops who tried to sell them the rations to which they were entitled; there were even cases of suspected cannibalism.

If the Chindwin promised them safety, the promise was illusory, for General Slim was now determined to hound them to the Irrawaddy. 19th Indian Division was across the river on 4th December, and driving eastwards, effected a junction with the British 36th Division, coming down from the north, at Indaw eleven days later. 19th Division then turned south, heading for Shwebo. On 24th December 2nd British Division also began its drive on Shwebo, via Ye-u, having crossed near Kalewa, which was also the crossing point for 20th Indian Division, now heading for Monywa. Japanese hopes of containing the advance in the close country bordering the Chindwin soon vanished, and the mountainous jungle of northern Burma began to give way to a more open landscape in which the British armour could be used to even better advantage.

The speed of the advance between the two rivers came as a surprise to everyone, and confirmed that General Kimura, who had replaced Kawabe following the latter’s dismissal, intended to fight a major battle beyond the Irrawaddy. Most of the fighting took place against tie Japanese rear-guards, B Squadron 3rd Carabiniers fighting a number of sharp actions in support of 2nd Division, but elsewhere the tanks were scarcely involved.

Once the jungle was left behind and more open country reached, the Daimler armoured cars of PAVO, now commanded by Lt-Colonel C. C. Morrison, late of 7th Light Cavalry, began to come into their own.

The role of armoured cars can be very varied. They can be used to obtain information, and fight for it if they have to, to patrol ahead of and on the flanks of a major advance, to open routes and deny them to the enemy, and to seize and hold vital features along a road, such as crossroads and bridges, to name but a few. In Burma, armoured car squadrons consisted of three troops of armoured cars, an SHQ troop, and two rifle troops, but as armoured car work invariably confers a large degree of autonomy on troop leaders, small units consisting of an armoured car troop, a troop of riflemen in three trucks and a 3-inch mortar in a wheeled carrier, were considered a satisfactory balance for independent operations. The work itself was exciting and dangerous, and called for a high degree of initiative and quick thinking, as well as expert map reading and good radio links with the higher formation. Being both quieter and faster than tanks, armoured car units were often on top of the Japanese before they knew what was happening.

During January 1945, C Squadron PAVO operated in the triangle caused by the confluence of the Chindwin and Irrawaddy rivers. As well as providing protection for the right flank of 33 Corps, whose divisions were now massing to cross the Irrawaddy. The armoured-car troops were constantly on the move, appearing now in one place and then another, giving Japanese observers on the other bank the impression of a much larger force.

Although they may not have realized it at the time, PAVO were simulating the presence of 4 Corps, which Kimura was expecting to join 33 Corps for the great battle he expected to fight near Mandalay.

Kimura would not have been pleased to learn the true location of 4 Corps, although its divisions were hundreds of miles away.

*
Mutaguchi took the quarrel to his grave with him. Mourners at his funeral were each given a pamphlet, denouncing Sato.

*
Known generally as PAVO. Quite early in the war a number of Indian cavalry regiments had been equipped with lorries and sent to the Middle East as motorized infantry. With them went PAVO, which had formed part of the famous Punjab Frontier Force. During the Knightsbridge battle, PAVO were overrun, and their British officers marched into captivity. The VCOs, however, persuaded their Italian captors that the men would starve in the POW cages, since their religion forbad their eating normal European rations, and the Italians released them upon receiving a parole that they would not again fight in the Middle East. After marching across the desert to the British lines, the regiment was returned to India, and converted to armoured cars.

*
149 Regiment’s operational orders were as follows: A Sqn 149 RAC with RE Recce party under command will advance and support infantry in the DIS area, shoot up Jail Hill and attempt to reach GPT Ridge. Two B Sqn tanks will move from FSD to DIS and attempt to link up with A Sqn.

*
British and Indian losses for the period amounted to 17,000, but because of better medical services, a large percentage returned to duty later in the campaign.

†
In more than one captured hospital, the patients had been shot through the head. At Ukhrul, the hospital was turned into a funeral pyre after the patients had been killed. At another hospital the patients grinned bonily from their beds at the victors; they had been picked clean by red ants.

General Hoyotaro Kimura was an optimistic sort of man, and sincerely believed that he possessed the resources and the ability to inflict a severe defeat upon the Allied forces in Burma.

Kimura had replaced Kawabe following 15th Army’s disaster at Imphal, and had spent the monsoon months building up his forces so that by November he possessed three armies; 33rd, of two divisions, under Lt-General Seiza Honda, facing the Chinese in the north; 15th, of four divisions, under Lt-General Katamura, in central Burma and around Mandalay; and 28th, of three divisions under Lt-General Sakurai, disposed in the Arakan and southern Burma. His plan was to harass the Allied advance, but also permit them to enter central Burma, where, he reasoned, their supply position would become increasingly difficult, whilst his own troops would be fighting near their depots. In such a situation, he hoped, the logistic nightmare of the Manipur fiasco would be reversed, and this time it would be the Allies who crawled their painful way back to the Chindwin.

But Kimura had two serious blind spots in his planning. First, he badly underestimated the Allied air supply capacity, and could not imagine it supporting a major offensive. Secondly, he imagined that the main Allied thrust would be directed at Mandalay from the north, and had disposed his troops for what he hoped would be a decisive battle in the Mandalay–Meiktila area. In so doing, he ignored the alternatives open to a thoughtful and capable opponent.

Slim had, in fact, at one stage planned to move 4 Corps in alongside 33 Corps, imagining that Kimura would fight the decisive battle in the Shwebo plain. However, when the plain was evacuated by the Japanese, it became obvious that Kimura was going to use the Irrawaddy as a moat, and that if the original planned deployment of the two Corps was followed, the only
course the battle could follow would be a costly series of frontal attacks over the river.

It was therefore decided that whilst 33 Corps would continue to give the enemy the impression that the forcing of their river line north of Mandalay was 14th Army’s primary objective, 4 Corps would move in great secrecy down the Kabaw and Gangaw valleys, a journey of several hundred miles, seize a bridgehead in the area of Pakokku, and take Meiktila by
coup de main
, using an armoured column for the purpose. Meiktila was the nodal point of all Japanese communications to their 15th Army, and their principal airfield centre. It was, as Slim pointed out, the wrist through which supplies flowed into the Japanese fist clenched around Mandalay—slash the wrist, and the nerveless fingers would open of their own accord. Elaborate deception plans were put into effect, including a dummy Corps wireless net which daily broadcast orders, instructions and operational requirements, using deliberately slipshod procedure, which must have delighted the Japanese intercept units, who had no way of knowing that the real formations were hundreds of miles away, and travelling under strict wireless silence.

4 Corps, commanded by Lt-General F. W. Messervy, consisted of 7th and 17th Indian Divisions, 28th East African Brigade, and 255th Indian Tank Brigade. The tank brigade, commanded by Brigadier C. Pert contained three Sherman equipped regiments, 116 Regiment RAC, 5th King Edward VII’s Own Lancers (Probyn’s Horse), 9th Cavalry (Royal Deccan Horse), and B Squadron PAVO, close escort being provided by 4/4th Bombay Grenadiers. Intensive training had been carried out in the Imphal area, and at the end of January the three regiments began their long journey southwards through the Kabaw valley, travelling along little used buffalo tracks which passed through sparsely populated and difficult country. Inevitably, progress was slow, as the route required heavy work from the Corps engineers, and at times the bulldozer was the spearhead of the advance.

‘The intention was to move all the tanks on transporters,’ wrote the historian of the Deccan Horse, ‘but this, owing to the very bad roads and extremely difficult going, not improved by spasmodic but heavy rain, had to be abandoned, and the tanks did an average of 200 miles on their tracks before the Irrawaddy was reached.

‘It was during this approach march that we had most of our
teething troubles and owing to the heavy going and hundreds of bends in the mountainous roads, necessitating much low gear work and pulling on the sticks, there was hardly a tank that did not have new bogies, or the idlers and sprockets welded. The workshops and Light Aid Detachment’s work (commanded by Sub-Conductor S. F. Smith) during this period was beyond praise, and frequently they worked all night to get the tanks ready for the road by the morning, their difficulties were not lightened by the fact that every spare part had to be flown in by air.’

First into action was 116 Regiment RAC, commanded by Lt-Colonel J. N. F. Blackater. The regiment had been raised from a battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, and remained essentially a Highland regiment throughout its history. When not wearing their tank helmets, the crews went about their duties in their traditional Tam o’ Shanters, although every other British and Indian armoured regiment, with the exception of the turbanned Sikh squadrons, had long since adopted the black beret; nor did the regiment dispense with its pipers, without whom no Highland battalion could ever be regarded as complete. Such retentions represented a lot more than sentimental reminders of a colourful past; they served as an evocation of the Highlanders’ traditional lust for the fight and tremendous élan in the attack, which had been very evident long before General Cope arrived breathless in Berwick with the news of his defeat at Prestonpans. These qualities were very evident in all 116 Regiment’s actions, which showed a consistent will to close with and dominate the enemy throughout.

As 4 Corps neared their objective on the Irrawaddy, Pakokku, from which it was intended to launch their assault across the river, resistance was encountered at the village of Kanhla. The enemy’s position was a potentially strong one, being situated amongst some pagodas along a line of bluffs.

On 10th February the Japanese were pitched out of their defences by a dashing attack carried out by 4/5th Gurkhas with the support of Major P. W. Craig’s C Squadron.

Closing in to within 400 yards of the enemy’s bunkers, the Shermans hammered them into rubble, destroying twenty-two and then overrunning the remainder in two waves so that any missed by the leaders could be tackled by the second echelon. The enemy’s resistance was sharp while it lasted, costing the Gurkhas thirty in killed and wounded and one troop leader killed by a shell splinter, and then they fled, leaving 100 bodies behind.

9 4 Corps’ operations aimed at Meiktila

Two days later C Squadron assisted 4/14th Punjabis to capture Pakokku in an operation designed to divert Japanese attention from the crossing point opposite Nyaungu, near Pagan, the ancient capital of Burma.

Like all crossings of the 100-yard wide Irrawaddy during this campaign, this was made with the minimum of equipment, and bore no resemblance to the lavish operations carried out to force crossings of Europe’s major rivers, but is remarkable in that napalm was used against the Japanese for the first time. During the early hours of 14th February, 2nd South Lancashire Regiment from Major-General Evans’s 7th Indian Division, slid across the river in their assault boats and established a bridgehead before the enemy knew what was happening.